Pub campaigners are urging Bristol City Council to scrap major plans to demolish an eyesore former hotel and turn another next door into offices and instead restore them to their former glory as bars. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) says the authority’s proposals to buy or compulsory purchase both the derelict Grosvenor Hotel and the George and Railway building, opposite Temple Meads railway station, are “lacking both in imagination and ambition”.
It says many of the old Victorian interior features of the buildings are still intact and that an architectural survey should be carried out to determine the properties’ potential as a new pub/hotel gateway to Bristol. Council cabinet members rubber-stamped the latest stage of plans to transform the area on Tuesday (April 5) which includes spending £4million on a deal to bring the old George and Railway Hotel back into use.
It will then be sold to a development company which will redevelop the property into small and medium-sized offices before being leased back to the council to manage and rent out to companies. That comprises the first phase, and the report to cabinet gave fewer details about the Grosvenor Hotel, but previously announced plans revealed it would be bulldozed and replaced with a towering glass block, Engine Shed 2.
